How Russia’s Children Got So Violent. “There is no positive ideology for children in a country fighting a murderous war.” Ultranationalist & xenophobic violence is encouraged by Putin’s regime.

This website is compiling a sourced list of ICE abuses in Minnesota. (Click on “List” for the full listing.)

Zuidelijk Afrika heeft sinds begin dit jaar last van zware regens. Overstromingen hebben huizen weggeslagen en tientallen doden geëist. Het Krugerpark is uit voorzorg gesloten.

Na de schrik heerste er vooral opluchting bij de Utrechters wier huis was getroffen door een enorme explosie. Een bewoner zat op de wc: „Het kleinste kamertje hè, dat is de veiligste plek.”

Social

Fenomenaal intrigerend, geïsoleerde stammen / volkeren, mensen die niks met de buitenwereld te maken hebben, kunnen hebben, willen hebben. Daarom ook heeft half Nederland als koffietafelboek voor dummies een exemplaar van Before they pass away van Jimmy Nelson in huis. Enfin, bioloog, natuurbeschermer en schrijver Paul Rosolie deelt in de podcast van Lex Fridman nieuwe beelden van een geïsoleerde stam in de Amazone, waarbij het lijkt te gaan om de confrontatie met de Mashco-Pirostam, waar medio 2024 een foto van opdook en waar de Volkskrant een Beeldvormers aan wijdde. Confrontatie is gevaarlijk en onvoorspelbaar: voor de onderzoekers, maar ook voor de stam: voor 'ons' gangbare ziektes als de griep zijn potentieel dodelijk. Kijk zelf.

Social

Today's links

• Catch this! Email is good, actually.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: LDS excommunication; King Foundation v "I Have a Dream"; "Lat-stage capitalism" v "Christ, what an asshole"; Pelosi v Porter.
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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Catch this! (permalink)

Call it "lifehacking," or just call it, "paying attention to how you stay organized" – I don't care what you call it, I am an ardent practitioner of it.

I like improving my processes because I like what I do, and the more efficient I am at all of it (with apologies to Jenny Odell), the more of that stuff I can get done:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/04/09/how-to-do-nothing-jenny-odells-case-for-resisting-the-attention-economy/

I want to do a lot of stuff. I am one of those people who is ten miles wide and one inch deep (it probably has something to do with imbibing Heinlein's maxim that "specialization is for insects" at an impressionable age). There's a million waterways I want to dip my toe (or my oar) into, and the better organized I am, the more of that stuff I'll get to do before I kick off. I'm 54, and while there's a lot of road ahead of me, I can see the end, off there in the distance. It's coming, and I'm not done – I'm barely getting started.

I've been around lifehacking since the very moment it was born. I was there. I published the notes on Danny O'Brien's seminal 2004 talk at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, "Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks":

https://craphound.com/lifehacksetcon04.txt

In the years since, I've cultivated a small – but mighty – repertoire of organizational habits and tools that let me get a hell of a lot done. Weirdly, many of these tools are things that other people hate, and I can see why – they use them in very different ways from me. That's true of browser tabs (I loooove browser tabs):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/25/today-in-tabs/#unfucked-rota

And to-do lists, which will totally transform your life, once you realize that the most important to-do list is the one you maintain for everyone else who owes you a response, a package, or money:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/26/one-weird-trick/#todo

Other essential tools languish in neglect, artifacts of the old, good web – the elegant weapons that dominated a more civilized age. First among these? RSS readers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise

I will freely stipulate that people have a good reason to hate all this stuff. "Productivity porn" is often proffered as a mix of humblebrag (a way to make other people jealous of your almighty "productivity") and denial (fiddling with your systems is a ready substitute for actually doing things). Many (most?) of the foremost self-appointed pitchmen for "lifehacking" are cringey charlatans peddling "courses" and other nonsense.

But if you keep digging, there's a solid foundation beneath all the rot. At its very best, this stuff is a way to figure out what you really want to do, and to organize your life so that the stuff you want to do is the stuff you're doing.

A lot of people get into this kind of thing thinking it'll let them do everything. No one can do everything. The best you can hope for is to make conscious decisions about which stuff you'll never get to, while leaving at least a little room for serendipity.

Like I said, I want to do a lot of stuff. My organizing tactics are as much about deciding what I won't do as they are about deciding what I will do:

https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-how-to-do-everything-lifehacking-considered-harmful/

Which brings me to another tool that everyone hates and I love: email. I live and die by email.

First of all, I filter all my incoming email: mail from people who are in my address book stays in my inbox; mail from people I've never heard from before goes into a mailbox called "People I don't know." When I reply to a message, Thunderbird adds the recipient to my address book, so the next time I hear from them, they'll stay in my main mailbox.

I also filter out anything containing the word "unsubscribe," sending it into a folder called "Unlikely" (but not if the message contains my name – which is how I can stay subscribed to mailing lists I don't have time to read and make sure to reply when someone mentions me).

Second of all, I have a zillion Quicktext macros that I use to reply to frequently asked questions. I have one that spits out my mailing address; another that spits out my bio; and others for politely saying no to things I don't have time for, for information about how to pay one of my invoices, etc, etc.

Third: I have a small folder of emails that I can't reply to right away (usually because I need some information from a third party), which I review every morning and answer anything that I can clear.

Finally, I save it all. I have so much saved email, which means that if you ask me about something from 20 years ago, there's a good chance I can find it – provided we organized it over email.

All of which explains why I refuse – to the extent that I can – to do anything important over instant messaging, whether that's Signal or any of the other messaging tools that come with social media, workplace software, etc.

I understand why people like instant messaging: it does not overwhelm you with the burdens of the past. It is largely ahistorical, with archives that are hard to access and search. Its norms and register are less formal than email.

And, of course, instant messaging is far superior to email in some contexts. If you're on vacation with friends, having a big group-chat where you can say, "I'm making dinner – is everyone OK with cheese?" is indispensable. Same goes for asking a friend for directions, announcing that you've arrived at someone's office, or confirming whether it's OK to substitute 2% for whole milk on a grocery run.

But if you're like me – if you've figured out how to do as many of the things that matter to you as you can possibly squeeze in, then getting an IM mid-flow is like someone walking up to a juggler who's working on a live chainsaw, a bowling ball, and a machete and tossing him a watermelon while shouting, "Hey, catch this!"

The problem is that if you are asking about something important, something that can't be instantaneously managed by the recipient, then they will have to drop everything they're doing and, at the very least, make a note to themselves to go back to your message later and deal with it. Instant messaging doesn't have an inbox with everything you've been sent. Of course, that's why people love it. But the fact that you can't see all the things other people are expecting you to answer doesn't mean that they aren't expecting it. It also doesn't mean that everything will be fine if you just ignore all those messages.

Instant messaging is a great tool for managing something that everyone is doing at the same time. It's also a nice way to keep an ambient social flow of updates from people in a rocking groupchat. But IM is fundamentally unserious. It is antithetical to the project of making a conscious decision about what you won't do, so that you do as many of the things that matter to you before you get to the end of the road.

A massive email inbox is intimidating, but switching to IMs doesn't make all the demands in the email go away. It just puts them out of sight until they either expire or explode. Far better to decide what balls you're going to drop than to have them knocked out of your hand by a fast-moving watermelon.

(Image: Mark James, CC BY 2.5, modified)

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Minneapolis Labor, Community Leaders Join Call for Jan. 23 General Strike to Demand ICE Out https://www.commondreams.org/news/minneapolis-ice-general-strike

• Bankrupt scooter startup left one private key to rule them all https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/16/bankrupt_scooter_startup_key/

• Equilibrium (is) for Dummies https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/equilibrium-is-for-dummies

• Investors Have a Large Footprint in Certain Rental Markets. It Just Depends on Where You Look. https://www.thesling.org/investors-have-a-large-footprint-in-certain-rental-markets-it-just-depends-on-where-you-look/

• Everything Costs More Because the Algorithm Says So https://thewalrus.ca/everything-costs-more-because-the-algorithm-says-so/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s formal excommunication from the Latter Day Saints https://web.archive.org/web/20010203204300/http://www.panix.com/~pnh/GodandI.html

#20yrsago King Foundation uses copyright to suppress “I Have a Dream” speech https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/14/AR2006011400980.html

#20yrsago Firefly fans trying to raise enough dough to produce a new season https://web.archive.org/web/20060118033219/https://www.browncoatsriseagain.com/

#20yrsago New discussion draft of GNU General Public License is released https://gplv3.fsf.org/

#10yrsago “Late stage capitalism” is the new “Christ, what an asshole” https://x.com/mjg59/status/688238257935548416

#10yrsago Worried about Chinese spies, the FBI freaked out about Epcot Center https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/jan/14/fbi-epcot/

#10yrsago India’s Internet activists have a SOPA moment: no “poor Internet for poor people” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/15/india-net-neutrality-activists-facebook-free-basics

#5yrsago Pelosi kicks Katie Porter off the Finance Committee https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/16/speaker-willie-sutton/#swampgator

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937

• Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25
  https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/

• Ottawa: Enshittification at Perfect Books, Jan 28
  https://www.instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/

• Toronto: Enshittification and the Age of Extraction with Tim Wu, Jan 30
  https://nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doctorow-and-tim-wu-enshittification-and-extraction/

• Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5
  https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/

• Berlin: Re:publical, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• Why Big Tech is a Trap for Independent Creators (Stripper News)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmYDyz8AMZ0

• Enshittification (Creative Nonfiction podcast)
  https://brendanomeara.com/episode-507-enshittification-author-cory-doctorow-believes-in-a-new-good-internet/

• A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet (39c3)
  https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet

• Enshittification with Plutopia
  https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-enshittification/

• "can't make Big Tech better; make them less powerful" (Get Subversive)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1EzM9_6eLE

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Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

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Upcoming books (permalink)

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026

---

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1141 words today, 8278 total)

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

---

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

An anonymous reader shares a report: China is pulling the plug on a key advantage held by high-frequency traders, removing servers dedicated to those firms out of local exchanges' data centers, according to people familiar with the matter.

Commodities futures exchanges in Shanghai and Guangzhou are among those that have ordered local brokers to shift servers for their clients out of data centers run by the bourses, according to the people, who said the move was led by regulators. The change doesn't only affect high-frequency firms but they are likely to feel the biggest impact. The Shanghai Futures Exchange has told brokers they need to get equipment for high-speed clients out by the end of next month, while other clients need to do so by April 30, the people said.

The clampdown will hit China's army of domestic high-frequency firms but will also impact a swathe of global firms that are active in the country. Citadel Securities, Jane Street Group and Jump Trading are among the foreign firms whose access to servers is being affected, the people said, asking not to be named as the matter is private.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI still can't produce code as well as most junior programmers he's worked with, David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder of 37 Signals, said on a recent podcast [video link], which is why he continues to write most of his code by hand. Hansson compared AI's current coding capabilities to "a flickering light bulb" -- total darkness punctuated by moments of clarity before going pitch black again.

At his company, humans wrote 95% of the code for Fizzy, 37 Signals' Kanban-inspired organization product, he said. The team experimented with AI-powered features, but those ended up on the cutting room floor. "I'm not feeling that we're falling behind at 37 Signals in terms of our ability to produce, in terms of our ability to launch things or improve the products," Hansson said.

Hansson said he remains skeptical of claims that businesses can fire half their programmers and still move faster. Despite his measured skepticism, Hansson said he marvels at the scale of bets the U.S. economy is placing on AI reaching AGI. "The entire American economy right now is one big bet that that's going to happen," he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Al sinds 2000 wacht Sparta op een zege in De Kuip. Met een nieuwe editie van de Rotterdamse derby in aantocht, is het de vraag of dat deze keer gaat lukken, zeker nu Feyenoord aan een dramatische reeks bezig is.

Een vader die met zijn dochter in een bakfiets op de Schieveensedijk in Rotterdam reed, is vrijdagmiddag rond 15:50 uur aangereden door een auto. Een bestelbus wilde de bakfiets inhalen, maar schrok volgens een 112-correspondent van een tegemoetkomende auto. Daardoor raakte hij de bakfiets.

Twee auto’s zijn tegen elkaar gebotst op de Parelvisserstraat in Hoogvliet. Op de kruising met de Marthalaan knalde rond 15:10 uur een auto tegen de zijkant van een andere auto.

Wethouder Ronald Buijt wil een streep zetten door de grens van 25 kilometer voor de Rotterdammers die gebruik maken van het doelgroepenvervoer. De opdracht wil hij onderhands gunnen aan RMC Rotterdam BV, de voorlopige winnaar van de aanbesteding. Andere vervoerders zijn boos op de wethouder en de gemeente. Een nieuwe, derde rechtszaak is het gevolg.

​Vanavond begint The Voice of Holland weer na een afwezigheid van vier jaar. De makers willen geen enkel risico nemen op nieuwe gevallen van grensoverschrijdend gedrag en machtsmisbruik, dus zal het programma dit jaar geen deelnemers hebben. “Better to be safe than sorry”, zegt presentatrice Chantal Janzen met een ernstig gezicht.

“Sommige dingen zijn hetzelfde gebleven. We hebben de stoelen bijvoorbeeld gehouden, daar gaan we ook weer op zitten. Met de knop kan je die stoel laten omdraaien, en dan nog een keer drukken om terug te draaien”, aldus Janzen. “Het wordt misschien iets minder spannend, maar je moet er iets voor over hebben. In principe zullen de coaches vooral angstig met hun armen over elkaar op de stoel zitten zonder iets te doen.”

Wel heeft The Voice een winnaar: Johan, cameraman van het eerste uur. “Een enorm getalenteerde man”, zo stelt producent John de Mol. “En nogal een botte gast, van hem kan je er tenminste van op aan dat hij zijn mond opendoet als er wat gebeurt.”

Het vierogenprincipe wordt ingezet om Dinand in de gaten te houden.

​​

&

The exact reasons for the slight decrease are unclear, although some Russian regions are reported to have cut the size of their military sign-up bonuses last year.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Microsoft claims it's a Secure Launch bug

We're not saying Copilot has become sentient and decided it doesn't want to lose consciousness. But if it did, it would create Microsoft's January Patch Tuesday update, which has made it so that some PCs flat-out refuse to shut down or hibernate, no matter how many times you try.…

First sign-in restore aims to cut rebuilds when users skip setup options

Microsoft has quietly tweaked Windows Backup for Organizations to include restore at first sign-in.…

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Het kabinet heeft 5,7 miljoen euro betaald voor de kunstroof in het Drents Museum van begin vorig jaar. Toen werd onder meer een gouden helm uit Roemenië gestolen. Dat meldt demissionair minister Gouke Moes (Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap, BBB) in een brief aan de Tweede Kamer.

Het geld gaat naar verzekeraar AON. Die heeft eerder al eenzelfde bedrag aan Roemenië betaald.